Significance

by Jo Mazelis

  He did not understand why she had not told him she was going away. It was unkind of her, cowardly even. Especially if she had gone away with some other man. A man who had perhaps footed the bill for these dresses, paid for the trip – some extravagant week-long break in Italy or Iceland. Or for that matter in the UK in some cosy boutique hotel in the Lake District or Cornwall.

  He went into the living room and pressed the play button on her answer machine. A mechanical voice announced that she had twenty-six new messages. The first of which was his. He was surprised at the brisk formality of his own voice.

  ‘Thom here, I’ll be finished work at six. Give me a ring.’

  The second message was also his.

  ‘Lucy? You there? Pick up.’ A silence. Then, ‘Okay, ring me.’

  The third was Lucy’s mother. ‘Hello, hello? Lucy, darling, Mum here. Just ringing for a wee chat. Daddy sends his love. Bye for now.’

  The next was a brief listening silence.

  Then Thom again, sounding edgy and ticked off. ‘Lucy, I’ve tried your mobile and the college. Give us a ring, eh?’

  Then the letting agency. ‘Hi, it’s Julie here from London Living. Just a reminder that your lease is due for renewal. The papers are in the post and we need them back by the specified date on the form. Thank you.’

  A message from the college. ‘Hi Lucy, Mitra here, can we meet up to talk about the screen-printing project? Noel’s quite keen now to set things in motion. Bye-ee.’

  So it went, all of the messages increasing in urgency or frustration or confusion.

  ‘Hi Lucy, okay, the meeting is tomorrow. I’ve arranged for me, Noel, Keith from finance and Susan Walters from surface pattern design to be in the print area at one. Bye-ee.’

  ‘Lucy, it’s three o’clock now and to be blunt, it didn’t look good you not being there; you are after all the project leader. What’s up? Is it Thom? Is he giving you a hard time? Again! Anyway, at the meeting I told a little white lie, said you had food poisoning. Okay? Anyway hun, give me a ring. I’m beginning to get worried.’

  Mitra had rung Thom at the college the day before yesterday and left a message asking if he knew how she could get in touch with Lucy. Her tone had been bristling with polite contempt. Now he understood why.

  The last few messages chilled him.

  ‘Hello, this is a message for Miss Lucy Swann; we haven’t received your renewed contract for the flat. This may be an oversight on your part. If so could you drop into the office by close of business today with the paperwork? Thank you.’

  ‘Lucy, Mum here again. Is everything alright my darling? We haven’t heard from you for over two weeks now. I know you’re busy, but just give us a wee tinkle so we know all’s well. Bye for now.’ Her voice sounded frail and on the edge of tears.

  ‘Hello Lucy. Daddy calling. Your mother’s getting very worried now. Well, you know what a worrier she is with you there in the big bad city. Alright doll. Ring us! Okay?’

  ‘Lucy, it’s Mitra again. Look, I had a chat with Noel. I came clean about my fib and he said that he was also worried and how last time he’d seen you, you were a bit spaced out. Kinda not yourself. Sorry. And … oh god … don’t hate me for saying this, but I remembered something you told me about what happened before. You know, the breakdown when you were at college. And you know, now I think about it, you were a bit hyper these last few weeks. Look, I don’t want to make things worse, I’m just worried. Please get in touch and I’m sorry if I’ve overstepped the mark here. Love you.’

  Thom sat down on the sofa. Stared for a long time at the answer machine. The red light no longer blinking, just glowing faintly as if waiting.

  La Barbe-Bleue

  Vivier and Pelat were back at the station by eight-thirty in the morning, while Lamy had been left with another officer to search the rest of the gîte’s garden and the area immediately behind it for any other evidence. Pelat had expected Lamy to respond somewhat grudgingly to this order (not that there was any question he could challenge any task she assigned him, but certain facial expressions could give him away) but in this instance, surprisingly, he looked positively delighted with the prospect.

  She remembered the steady, somewhat disturbing gaze he had fixed on the mother’s breast as she fed her child, but allowed that this might have been an entirely benign sort of stare, not one borne of sexual desire, but rather awe and wonder at this perfectly natural and beautiful act.

  Vivier was making coffee while Sabine laid out the plastic bags which contained the newly found evidence on a table.

  It was curious how the contents of the bag had landed in a neat sort of pile in the flower bed, it almost gave the impression that it had been carefully positioned there, but on the other hand if it had been swung in an arc, then centrifugal force would keep the contents safe at the bottom of the bag until impact. The basket (she was sure her mother had possessed one very like this, though larger – it had been abandoned in the woodshed and contained a few old wooden pegs, short lengths of string, boxes of matches and some rusty hinges, hooks and shutter fastenings) evoked for Pelat an aura of the nineteen-fifties and sixties, as had the dress the young woman wore.

  When the old couple, the Eszterhas came in (if they came in) they might identify the body in the morgue as the young woman they had seen two days ago, and also recognise the cardigan and bag as hers. So that the girl, the bag and the cardigan could then be tied with each other and they could begin to piece together a journey of sorts. Or several journeys rather; the cardigan’s to the lost property store at the café, the bag’s to the garden overlooking the Bais du Somme and the young woman’s to her lonely death on the waste ground near the industrial estate.

  Now it seemed they could learn certain intimate things about the murder victim; what brand of mascara she favoured, where she shopped. They knew that she smoked cigarettes and that she was almost certainly staying in a hotel. The key fob was numbered six, but it was unfortunately one of those generic ones that could be bought at most locksmiths, a simple circular black tag with the number in an inset white shape. It could belong to any number of small hotels and guest houses in the town, or for that matter any other town. The woman may have had a car and could have driven into Neuville-Sur-Mer for the day with the intention of returning to her hotel later that night.

  Despite the news about an unidentified woman being found dead, no hotelier had come forward to report the disappearance of one of their guests. There again the rumours were rife that the dead woman was a prostitute and so perhaps the connection was not entirely obvious. Equally, in the event that the woman had booked in for a whole week or perhaps two, her comings and goings would not necessarily have been noticed, nor, crucially, her absence.

  Sabine pictured the woman’s hotel room in her mind’s eye, a smallish room, simply furnished. The bed made up in readiness for its occupant, some personal items on the small table next to the bed, a paperback book perhaps, a travel alarm clock, a packet of tissues, a lip salve. On the dresser, a make-up bag and some jars of moisturiser, eye make-up remover, cleanser, perfume. In the en-suite bathroom, shower cream, shampoo, conditioner. In a glass near the sink, a toothbrush and paste. Hanging on the shower rail to dry, underwear that had been hand-washed in the sink.

  In the wardrobe, more pretty dresses or light summer skirts and blouses. In the suitcase on the folding stand, an accumulation of souvenirs and gifts, a bottle of cognac. There too, perhaps, the woman’s passport, her house keys.

  All of it waiting for the occupant’s return, the pillows on the bed cool and smooth and somehow achingly lonely – sensing their uselessness without a human head to cradle through the sweet dreaming night.

  And the imagined dresses too, which hung uselessly in the wardrobe like lonely and disembodied dancing princesses deprived of their night at the ball. Another image abruptly invaded Sabine’s mind, that of the locked room in Charles Perrault’s La Barbe-Bleue. It had haunted her dreams for years, the nightmare of that forb
idden room where the walls were hung with the corpses of young women and the floor was sticky with their spilled blood.

  ‘Sabine!’

  She jumped at the voice and turned to see Inspector Vivier.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ she said, ‘you startled me.’

  He did not apologise, but merely raised one curious eyebrow.

  ‘The witnesses are here, so I thought we’d show them the bag first, then the body.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The English couple looked as if they had aged ten years overnight, but there was something heartening about the way they sat side by side holding one another’s hands, giving and gaining strength from each other. Although they looked immeasurably tired, they lifted their faces bravely and sat straight-backed in preparation for whatever horrors lay ahead.

  ‘This is Sabine Pelat whom you may have met yesterday,’ Vivier explained, ‘and this is an item which we hope you may be able to identify.’

  As one, they turned their faces to Sabine, then dropped their eyes to the bag she held. She stepped forward and offered the object to the man who, unthinkingly jerked his head back as if repulsed, but more likely he was trying to keep the object in focus. The woman, however, did not hesitate, but reached past her husband to accept the bag inside its protective plastic covering. She handled it confidently, turning it around in her hands several times, frowning and slowly nodding. Then she offered it to her husband – who accepted it, and seemingly taking the lead from his wife, turned it over in his hands, inspecting it.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, at last. ‘It rings a bell. There is something familiar about it, but…’

  ‘It is the bag the young woman carried,’ the woman said with certainty. The man glanced at his wife. He looked like the sort of man who listened to his wife’s opinion, respected what she had to say. She continued confidently, ‘Or if it isn’t the actual bag, then it is exactly the same style.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Vivier said. ‘This is a great help to the investigation, but there is a more onerous task ahead which I hope you will undertake?’ He stood up pushing the chair back, making a sudden harsh noise that caused the couple to visibly wince.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, then lifted his hand graciously to indicate the door. The couple rose hesitantly and, still holding hands, followed Sabine out of the room. Vivier went through last.

  The morgue was located in the basement of the building and as they were halfway down the concrete stairway a strong smell of disinfectant and bleach permeated the air. No one spoke and the sound of their footsteps echoed in the confined space.

  Sabine half turned to check that the couple were alright and noticed how the man was walking in an uneven shuffle, putting his weight chiefly on his left leg, while using his right hesitatingly. She had been walking briskly at her normal pace, but now she slowed down a little.

  ‘It won’t take very long,’ she said in an attempt to soothe them. They murmured in response.

  At the door to the morgue itself, they stopped.

  ‘Could I ask that you view the body one at a time and that you do not indicate by any word or facial expression to one another whether this is the girl you saw?’

  The man and the woman nodded, then drawing her hand reluctantly from her husband’s, Hilda Eszterhas said, ‘I’ll go first,’ and stepping forward she stood side by side with Vivier at the threshold. Vivier grasped the door handle. ‘We shouldn’t be longer than a few minutes.’ He opened the door and with one hand lightly cupping the woman’s elbow led her inside.

  Revenant

  Scott was having his old nightmare again. He was standing in a dim room holding the all-too-familiar pillow. He could feel it in his hands, warm and slightly damp beneath his palms. He could see the mustard colour of the fabric and the repeated vignettes of the Lone Ranger on his rearing horse, the brightly coloured wigwam, the tomahawk and the tall cactus with two curving branches like upturned arms.

  But the room in the dream was this room and not that other room from long ago. There was nothing in the room. No cot, no bed, no sleeping brother. And he was not a child, but a fully grown man. Something was closing in on him, something heavy and black. The darkness itself seemed animate and malevolent; thick and dense, it seemed to pinion his arms and legs, then every part of his body. Yet all his focus was on the object in his hands. Then suddenly – in one of those rapid reversals so peculiar to dreams – his hands were no longer holding the pillow; they were pushing it away, because it was being forced onto his face, suffocating him.

  He woke abruptly. He had been sleeping (unusually for him) on his belly, three-quarters of his face pressed into the pillow.

  The room was beginning to grow light. He was bathed in sweat. He gave a groan of complaint and lifting his head, saw Marilyn seated at the table under the window. She turned to look at him, frowning sympathetically.

  ‘Bad dream?’

  He grunted and flapped the hot damp covers away from his body, then moved over to the other side of the bed where it was cool and dry.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t know. Early. What time’s sunrise?’ she said, then shrugged and turned back to her work.

  He breathed out noisily, shut his eyes and felt his body relax. From across the room he could hear Marilyn’s pen scratching over the paper. Short staccato sounds, then silence, then a decisive single noise. A straight line, a crossing out, the sound which was not dissimilar to that of an arrow being dispatched.

  She murmured under her breath a few words from whatever it was she was writing. Her voice was musical, incantatory, fragmented.

  ‘My mother said, and said again,’ he heard, then the fierce sound of the pen as she scored out some of the words.

  ‘Marilyn?’ he said, opening his eyes.

  She was hunched over the desk, writing another line, rocking slightly as she did so. She didn’t seem to hear him.

  He waited, watching. The small movements of her right arm as she wrote, barely perceptible. Then she stopped writing and twisted to face him.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I had to get that down or I’d forget.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘Do you want some coffee?’ she asked, brightly.

  He considered this. It wasn’t what he had interrupted her for, but her question demanded some sort of an answer.

  Did he want coffee? Yes, probably, but there was something else too.

  He threw back the bed covers and swung his legs over the side.

  ‘I’ll make it,’ he said. ‘You carry on.’

  ‘I looked in on Aaron, he’s still asleep.’

  ‘Okay. Coffee?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Marilyn?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Let’s go home.’

  She had turned back to her desk and was once more scratching the pen rapidly over the page. She wasn’t listening, not really. He stood behind her, wondering whether to say it again, but even as he did so he was calculating the cost of three more flight tickets, the lies he might tell in order to get their existing return tickets altered, the insurance claim he might be able to swing. If they got Aaron to a doctor here, if they lied, if they could invent some tragedy back home. Or he could pay for the flights with his American Express card. His credit was good and somehow at that moment, paying thousands of dollars back over the next three or four years sounded a small price to pay to get back to Canada now or at least within the next twenty-four hours.

  ‘Coffee then,’ he said and pulled a t-shirt over his head.

  Distractedly, still scribbling away, she nodded, her head dipping rhythmically in time with whatever was happening between her mind, her hand and the moving pen.

  He could not fathom how he had wound up with this strange creature. Poets he had always thought, (not that it was something he thought about a lot) should couple with other poets. Painters with painters. Musicians with musicians. Or even, he thought reproachfully, good people with equally good people.

>   Or so it seemed.

  But he loved her. There was no doubt of that.

  Marilyn was trying once again to rewrite the poem about her mother, about the idea of escaping death, about drowning. She could not understand why she kept going back to it, the poem didn’t work, its sentiments were inauthentic, her heart wasn’t in it. It lacked grace notes and depth, and the word ‘hyperbole’ was like a great lump of undigested food lodged in the belly of the poem.

  She should abandon it. She should write about her pregnancy. But of course she was afraid Scott (though she had rarely known him to) might read something from over her shoulder and discover that she was expecting a child.

  With each subsequent attempt at the poem she felt more lost, more useless; incapable of completing it, unable to produce any poems that had worth, and with that thought her past successes also crumbled. All her small triumphs seemed mere trickery, based on luck rather than real intelligence, skill or talent.

  ‘Okay, coffee,’ Scott had said.

  And she had said, ‘Please.’

  Then he’d said something else, but she hadn’t heard what it was.

  She was half aware of him hovering in the room behind her, lingering as if he was waiting for something from her. But her mind was elsewhere. She was summoning the past, trawling her memory for the elusive, physical actuality of her mother; her scent, the sound of her voice, the precision of her movements and expressions, the theatrical widening of her eyes when outraged, the close press of her lips when concentrating, how the flesh on her upper arms wobbled when she was beating cake mixture and the irritating smack of her lips when she licked her finger in order to turn the page of a book. Her greedy boastful possessiveness when Marilyn did something well, her derision when she failed.